


Aftermath

by clayrlibrarian



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, askficlet, post-Captain America 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-20
Updated: 2014-04-20
Packaged: 2018-01-20 03:21:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1494658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clayrlibrarian/pseuds/clayrlibrarian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve had always expected something after death. This, however, was definitely not what he'd hoped for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> I got this message on tumblr: "i bet when he crashed that plane back in the war he thought he was gonna see bucky again" I kinda ran with it.

The first thing Steve notices is that Heaven is soft and warm.

He’s lying on a bed, he assumes. There’s a gentle breeze from what must be an open window to his right. He hears a voice from a radio. A baseball game being broadcast by the sound of it. 

He can’t remember ever having slept in a bed this soft, he can’t remember the last time he slept in a bed, period. 

His lungs still work just like they have since the serum, he feels healthy. 

He silently thanks God for letting him keep his artificial health.

All in all, for the first seconds of wakefulness after crashing into the ice, the place that must be Heaven is peaceful, warm and quiet.

He’d expected something grander than the first sounds of the afterlife being a baseball game that, from the few snippets he’s caught so far, sounds vaguely familiar, but, after everything that has happened, peaceful is good.

Heaven is supposed to be exactly what makes him happy and while he hasn’t voiced it, he has missed the idea of calm summer days in New York, Bucky puttering somewhere around their place and worries being unimportant for one rare moment.

The first clue that something is definitely off about this version of what might be Heaven is the fact that he’s pretty sure the other person in the room is not Bucky. 

It doesn’t feel like him, sound like him, at all.

Steve had accepted death, in the last few seconds on that plane, the cold and the water creeping in, vaguely aware of the fact that, just like his best friend before him, he feel into a cold, lonely death.

He might be without Peggy for a hopefully long while, but at least he’d have Bucky there. It’d be the two of them again, but without the troubles of being poor and without much of a future in New York. Only the good stuff.

Not that he or any of the Commandos would admit it, but they’d all spent some thoughts on it. Death, what happened after, what Heaven would be like. 

The second clue that this can’t be it occurs to him as the announcer talks about some particularly interesting turn of the game on the radio. He knows that particular game. He’s been there. With Bucky, in 1941. The memory definitely counts as good stuff. To Steve, four years feel like forever ago.

Steve furrows his eyebrows and opens his eyes. 

There’s a woman here, he doesn’t know her and everything is wrong. She moves all wrong for a nurse, acts wrong for someone in a field hospital. Most importantly, she's human, alive and normal, not an angel or a dead loved one to welcome him. 

This is not heaven, this is Earth, it's supposed to look like home.

Steve did not die on that plane in the ice. 

Both Bucky and Peggy are gone. 

Everyone is.

Steve runs, a stranger named Nick Fury stops him and during that explanation, he doubts he could've found a place further from Heaven.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi, leave prompts or cry with me at sopharamiris.tumblr.com


End file.
